Scanning Laser

[King Tut]

I've just bought a secondhand laser GVG 701 - it's either 30 or 40 Milliwatt depending on what you read!

Would this be safe to point into the audience - I've no instructions and the company has stopped selling lasers!

[Colledge]

ive (unfortunately) been in plenty of bad nightclubs where they're set up directly at the crowd... so they get away with it... but no idea on actual safety or legality of the issue.

[chris_b]

[quote name='King Tut' post='985040' date='Oct 11 2010, 11:32 PM']....I've just bought a secondhand laser GVG 701 - it's either 30 or 40 Milliwatt depending on what you read! Would this be safe to point into the audience - I've no instructions and the company has stopped selling lasers!....[/quote]

They seem to be aimed at everything down to family parties so I would guess they are safe, but you'd better get the company to tell you that.

[url="http://www.gvgdiscolighting.com/lasers.php"]http://www.gvgdiscolighting.com/lasers.php[/url]

Edited October 11, 2010 by chris_b

[flyfisher]

[quote name='King Tut' post='985040' date='Oct 11 2010, 11:32 PM']I've just bought a secondhand laser GVG 701 - it's either 30 or 40 Milliwatt depending on what you read!

Would this be safe to point into the audience - I've no instructions and the company has stopped selling lasers![/quote]

You might want to check for other sources but according to this, anything above 1mW is illegal in the UK (read the entire article):

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer[/url]
[i]UK and most of Europe are now harmonized on Class 2 (<1 mW) for General presentation use laser pointers or laser pens. Anything above 1mW is illegal in the UK. Health and Safety regulation insists on use of Class 2 anywhere the public can come in contact with indoor laser light, and the DTI have urged Trading Standards authorities to use their existing powers under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 to remove lasers above class 2 from the general market [42][/i]

I'd want to ensure my liability insurance would give me gold-plated guaranteed cover before I started pointing any sort of laser into an audience, particularly if it's a DIY rig.

[fretmeister]

[quote name='flyfisher' post='985544' date='Oct 12 2010, 11:37 AM']You might want to check for other sources but according to this, anything above 1mW is illegal in the UK (read the entire article):

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer[/url]
[i]UK and most of Europe are now harmonized on Class 2 (<1 mW) for General presentation use laser pointers or laser pens. Anything above 1mW is illegal in the UK. Health and Safety regulation insists on use of Class 2 anywhere the public can come in contact with indoor laser light, and the DTI have urged Trading Standards authorities to use their existing powers under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 to remove lasers above class 2 from the general market [42][/i]

I'd want to ensure my liability insurance would give me gold-plated guaranteed cover before I started pointing any sort of laser into an audience, particularly if it's a DIY rig.[/quote]


It's not just the insurance issue - think what a strong laser will do.

Do you want to blind someone forever?

Also if the CPS decide that, on an objective basis, you knew [b]or should have known[/b] that the use could cause blindness then you can find yourself up on a ABH / GBH charge. If the item is illegal then that will aggravate any sentence you get.


The insurance is the least of your worries - but if you permantnetly blind someone in both eyes then you are going to owe them about £100,000 for the injury, another £20K for the psychological issues AND their resultant loss of earnings if they can't work again. (20 year old concert goer earning £20,000 a year, expected retirement age of 65, but discounted to say 55 due to lump sum payment means 35 years of loss of earnings = £700,000.00 before we think about inflation and his promotion prospects.... and the need for guide dogs (you pay for the food and vets as he wouldn't have needed it otherwise) etc etc etc

All you need is for your insurance to refuse to pay out and the injured person will own your house and a good part of your earnings for the rest of your natural.


Lasers are cool - but get proper ones from a reputable UK supplier than you can sue if you need to.


(I'm a lawyer - and I've just had to deal with an eye surgeon who used the wrong laser settings on a poor woman that hoped for a correction to her short sight....)

[TimR]

If it has a Yellow Caution class II Laser sticker on it then it will be OK.
If it has a Red Danger class n Laser sticker on it then run away.
If it has no sticker on it run away even faster.

The lasers linked to have a key switch on them which makes me think you should run away fairly quickly.

Have a look at this [url="http://www.nu-light.co.uk/lasers/lsafety.htm"]http://www.nu-light.co.uk/lasers/lsafety.htm[/url]

[crez5150]

Well a lot of our lasers we use from Martin/Le MAitre and Kam most are over 240 Mw so I don't think there is a problem

[Mr. Foxen]

[King Tut]

Flyfishers response refers to laser pointers - not display lasers. There is a difference in that a scanning laser is believed to cause much less damage than a pointer because it never stays in the same place for long enough to cause damage UNLESS IT FAILS and stays in one place.

It's got a yellow sticker so it falls under the class 3B regulations - the UK distributors have got back to me and said it shouldn't be pointed into the crowd - so that has given me my answer!!

[YouMa]

Blind the fukkas

[bobbass4k]

One of the first things we were taught in our uni physics lab was lasers will kill you if you so much as blink at them cockeyed. They're not actually that dangerous, as long as you don't look directly into the beam, or put an appendage in the beam (depending on power and energy output). You SHOULD be fine with scanning lasers, i've seen them in plenty of clubs and such mounted on the celing point at the dance floor, i wouldn't put it at eye level though.

What colour is it?

[King Tut]

It's green mate. I think the problems arrive should the scanning sytem fail and the laser stops moving - possibly pointing directly in someone's eyeball. I think I'll play safe with this one!

[flyfisher]

[quote name='King Tut' post='987594' date='Oct 14 2010, 12:40 AM']Flyfishers response refers to laser pointers - not display lasers. There is a difference in that a scanning laser is believed to cause much less damage than a pointer because it never stays in the same place for long enough to cause damage UNLESS IT FAILS and stays in one place.[/quote]
That's a fair point, and I've read that it's actually quite difficult to cause permanent harm with laser pointers because of their low power and the fact that, in practice, it would be very difficult to keep them focused on one area of the retina to cause tissue damage (think, shaky hands, blinking and gaze aversion reflex).

BUT, I regard such things as low risk but having [u]huge[/u] consequences. A bit like suspending a PA stack - the chances of a single bit of the rigging breaking will be tiny because of over-rating etc, but if it did fall someone would probably die, so they have backup fixings etc etc.

Fretmeister raised a similar point about laser eye surgery. I wear glasses but would never consider laser eyesight correction because of the risk - tiny though it may be. Wearing glasses, I have perfect vision, with pretty much zero downside, so why would I want to risk destroying that vision. However small the risk, the potential consequence is too great - for me anyway. Something that the unfortunate person mentioned by Freteister is now going to have to live with for the rest of their life.

[fretmeister]

The clinic has been shut down... but the actual surgeon is still in practice.

Not good at all.

[Adrenochrome]

We've used lasers similar to Crez at loads of gigs with no problems. I've heard of a couple of clubs that don't like them cos of 'Elfen Safety' but when quizzed they had no basis for not liking them. I don't remember reading anything about these kind of lasers causing eye damage in normal use. I'm happy to be corrected if the peer-reviewed data are available.